Fluid
by roane
Summary: A moonlit beach in southern Italy. Warm Mediterranean water. It's the most romantic setting John Watson has been in in months. If only he were able to properly enjoy it. (Includes skinny dipping and misunderstandings.)


**Note: **This was written for emmadelosnardos, whose prompt was "I would love to read a fic where they go skinny-dipping and it is NOT for a case and they are not in an established relationship yet."

Many thanks to ardatli and thisprettywren for the beta, and the participants of the Seattle Sherlock Con writing workshop, who helped me find the ending.

* * *

"I would think you've had more than enough sand in your life," Sherlock complained. "How more of it could hold any interest for you is beyond me."

"Just humour me." John steered the rental car off the coastal motorway onto a side road. "Make some observations on how Italian sand is different from London sand or something."

The silver glow of moonlight over the Mediterranean sea was breathtaking, and might have spurred a less prosaic man to poetry—had done, actually, if his recollections on the literature he'd read in school were to be relied upon. For John, it would be enough to walk on the sand, maybe touch the water. Given his finances and Sherlock's normal caseload, he was under no illusions as to the likelihood of returning to southern Italy any time soon.

They'd come here on a case, although John suspected the case was nothing more than an excuse to leave London for a bit. Sherlock had known Travis McNally would flee to Naples after spending five minutes in the man's flat, just as he had known that the deaths of McNally's wife and mistress weren't accidental. Now McNally was in custody awaiting extradition, and Sherlock's and John's flight left early in the morning. This was John's only chance to visit the shore.

He pulled into a turnoff and shut off the engine. The Mediterranean glistened to the left, the never-ending murmur of the waves beckoning. Sherlock was muttering as John got out of the car and closed the door behind him, but he heard Sherlock follow a few seconds later. The breeze blowing in off the sea was warm and ruffled John's short hair. He was glad he'd left his jacket in the car; there was no need for it tonight.

The beach was largely empty. John had heard some of the locals complaining about the chill in the air earlier during the day, but to him it felt more like late summer than mid-autumn. If he had to guess, he'd say that the couple far down the beach were tourists. Sherlock could probably tell him exactly where they were from.

"There. You've seen it. Can we go now?" Sherlock said from just over his right shoulder.

John kept walking across the sand. He paused, then knelt to take off his shoes and socks. May as well do the thing properly. "You have no poetry in your soul, Sherlock. Look around you, really look." The moonlight left a gleaming silver streak across the darkness of the water. The whole scene was stunningly romantic, leaving John with a pleasant sense of melancholy over his single status.

"John, really. Barefoot?" Sherlock sniffed. "The idea of a soul is sentimental claptrap, and to judge by the state of your inbox, poetry is a last resort to separate a potential sexual partner from his or her pants."

"Just because you don't know beauty when it bites you on the arse, doesn't mean the rest of us don't." He rolled up his trouser legs, leaving his socks and shoes behind him on the sand. The water was calling to him.

Water had always had a pull for him. His time in the desert had been a particularly arid sort of Hell: sand without water, without salt air and the crying of sea birds, had been so utterly wrong-feeling as to be offensive. He was in Afghanistan six months before he'd been able to ignore it.

The Mediterranean wasn't like the North Atlantic in any respect, save for the salt air and the ageless rolling roar. It was warm and inviting rather than cold and forbidding. John walked into it and was seized with a fierce joy when the first waves touched his toes. Merely paddling through the surf was not going to be enough. John wanted to be engulfed by the blood-warm salt water tickling his feet. With a glance down the shore at the long-distant couple, John pulled his jumper over his head and tossed it back up to the high tide line.

"John?" Sherlock sounded alarmed. "What are you doing?"

"Swimming!" John felt the stupid grin blooming on his face as he tugged away each layer of clothing: shirt, undershirt, trousers, and then after a pause, pants. Naked bathing had been the order of the day in the desert, and Sherlock had no qualms about wandering around their flat in nothing but a sheet. So he could bloody well turn his back if he didn't want to see.

The warm water closed around John's ankles, and then his calves, creeping slowly up his legs as he walked into the surf. The feel of the water against his skin was like the slow stroke of a lover's hand. Maybe it had just been too long, but John felt his cock twitch and begin to stir. Thankfully, the water was over his hips and he could just close his eyes and let go, enjoy the sensation.

Except he couldn't close his eyes. Sherlock was standing on the shore, looking, well, perplexed. He wore the same expression as he did when he was trying to solve a puzzle. To John's amazement, Sherlock carefully removed his suit jacket and started unbuttoning his shirt. The unexpectedness of it sent a frisson of... something down his spine. He realised he was staring and looked quickly away, pushing himself backwards, further into the sea.

John tried to focus on the warm pull of the salt water around him, but his eyes were continually drawn back to the shore, to the long pale form of Sherlock picking his way into the water as daintily as if it were freezing cold. To be fair, given Sherlock's percentage of body fat, it might seem that way. Finally curiosity won over, and John called, "I thought you were bored!"

Sherlock gave him a scowl, but kept creeping into the water in John's direction. For John, the initial shock of the tidal movement of water against his skin had dulled from immediately arousing to the equivalent of a sensual massage, the sweeping in and out movements of the waves soothing the aches of spending too much time sitting, and not enough time running about.

When Sherlock was only a few feet away from him, he said, "You looked as if you were enjoying yourself. I thought I'd see what the fuss was about."

John grinned. "What, you've never swum in the ocean before?"

"Don't be ridiculous, of course I have."

"Then what?"

Sherlock looked away towards the shore, and John followed his gaze to the twin piles of the clothing on the beach. He laughed. "You've never been skinny-dipping before."

"Of course not, why would I have?"

John shook his head, letting the waves push him closer to Sherlock. "What on earth you did during uni remains a mystery to me."

Sherlock wore the disdainful expression that John had come to recognise as a cover for insecurity. "Unlike some, I spent my time at university with interests other than getting naked with as many of my classmates as possible."

"Oh, I wasn't that bad," John said. "You have to admit, this is fun."

"Fun," Sherlock repeated. He pushed against the water with his arms until he was right in front of John. "I didn't think anyone ever actually did this for fun. I thought it was like poetry."

"What?"

"An excuse," Sherlock said, and closed the distance between them before John had a chance to think. "A way to separate someone from their pants." He leaned forward and kissed John, his mouth soft and tentative.

_Oh fuck._ John didn't react. Didn't know how to react. After the gentle caress of the water, his body seemed to have very definite ideas on how to react. He felt the slow, tidal movement of blood to his cock, and turned his hips away so that Sherlock wouldn't feel it and get the wrong idea. After a moment, he broke the kiss as gently as he could. "Sherlock..."

"It's all right, John. You were right, you know." He leaned back in and John tried to turn away, but he couldn't bring himself to make such a blunt rejection. He let Sherlock kiss him a second time, and damn it, it felt nice. It was a mistake to respond, and he knew it was, but it was lovely to feel wanted by someone, even if that someone had the wrong equipment.

When Sherlock reached for his waist though, John came to his senses, and pulled away once more. "Right about what?" John asked.

"You were right to assume I was attracted to you. Although I wasn't precisely being subtle." Sherlock smiled, and the gentleness of the expression cut John sharply. If he didn't say something soon, he would be the worst kind of friend.

"Sherlock... I'm not gay," John said. Which seemed a ridiculous thing to have to say, but he was naked, practically in Sherlock's arms after kissing him twice, and his erection was stubbornly refusing to go away.

"Of course you're not," Sherlock said, reaching out for John again. "You have an obvious interest in women as well, which would make you at the very least bisexual."

"No, I'm not," John protested, backing out of Sherlock's reach.

Sherlock was undeterred, as he always was when he was certain he was right. "Must I explain it to you? I would estimate that you've had two, possibly three, male partners, most likely while you were in Afghanistan. None since you've come home, which could indicate that you've lost interest, but more likely that you're focusing your interest on one person. And that person is me."

John felt his cheeks burning hot.

"Am I wrong?" asked Sherlock, staring intently at him.

"Well, about the details, no, but your conclusion's faulty," John said. "Sherlock, just because I might've gotten a hand from a friend once or twice that doesn't mean I'm interested in... well, more. It doesn't work like that."

"But you were—" Sherlock started to gesture towards John's groin, and John cut him off with a wave.

"Stop. Just stop. I am not having any more of this conversation until we both have clothes on." He swam for the shore, leaving Sherlock behind.

* * *

The silence in the car on the drive back to the hotel was utterly stifling. What had John done to give Sherlock the wrong impression? Obviously getting naked had been a mistake, but what had he done before that? Had he somehow been leading Sherlock on? Sherlock's taciturn stint behind the wheel confused him. He wasn't normally one to remain quiet when upset about something. John could only think that he must have hurt Sherlock terribly, or embarrassed him.

Once they'd reached the shore and dressed in awkward, stiff movements, there hadn't been much of anything else to say. Sherlock stopped trying to convince John that he was interested in Sherlock, and John stopped trying to defend his heterosexuality. He wasn't ashamed of anything he'd done—except where it might have caused Sherlock pain.

Finally he couldn't take the silence anymore. "All right?"

Sherlock took a deep breath through his nose and said, "No. It's not." His hands were tight around the steering wheel.

_Shit._ John had visions of scrambling to find a new flat on short notice, any flat, never mind one as nice as Baker Street. And farewell to his new life, which he'd started to enjoy immensely. He'd have to find a real position at a surgery, even if it meant settling for diagnosing colds and bladder infections instead of chasing down criminals with an illegal handgun tucked into his back. And while he didn't think of Sherlock romantically at all, he did think of him as a friend, the closest he'd had in a long time. All of that ruined now, over a misunderstanding.

"I'm sorry," was all he could manage to say.

"It's absolutely ridiculous," Sherlock said. "Idiotic!"

John winced, bracing himself for Sherlock to start arguing with him again.

"I know you better than anyone," Sherlock said, "so how on earth could I have gotten such a basic thing wrong? This is worse than when I thought you had a brother."

"Wait, what—?"

"It is," Sherlock continued. "I followed all of my observations to their logical conclusions, and once again, I was wrong." He scowled into the darkened windscreen. "Either there's a flaw in my methods that I've missed before, or... or..."

"People don't always fit into little boxes," John said quietly.

"But they do!" insisted Sherlock. "Except for you."

John sat for a moment, blinking. He opened his mouth, then closed it, then said. "You're angry because you guessed wrong," John said.

"I never guess," Sherlock said. "All of the evidence pointed in one direction. You have no idea how incredibly worrying this is."

John could have laughed in relief. "You're not angry with me," he said.

"Of course not, why would I be?" Sherlock barely paused to give it further thought. "No, there's something more at work here. My own emotional involvement, perhaps, caused me to see what I wanted to see—"

"So we're all right, then?"

"Oh for god's sake, John. I've been rejected before, you know. You're missing the point here!"

John started to relax, and leaned back into his seat. "All right then, tell me what I'm missing."

"This could be a major stumbling block in my work! I could have blind spots I'm unaware of. Oh John, this is serious. We have to figure this out." He kept rambling on, and John shook his head.

Sherlock's use of the word 'we' went a long way towards pushing away some of John's worry.

"All this time, John. I might have been wrong about something." He sounded so horrified that John had to keep from grinning. "No, not wrong," Sherlock backtracked. "But I might have been right for the wrong reason!"

John couldn't fight it anymore, and snorted.

"It's not funny, John. I was... _wrong_." Sherlock choked out the word. "And about you of all people."

"As long as you've got your priorities straight," John said, squashing the urge to laugh until it was just a smile. Don't worry, we'll get it sorted."


End file.
